here is what i am trying to say: there are words i use because i read them in someone else's work first. i construct sentences and imagery and metaphors because i was 11, 12, 13 14 15 16 and lonely and depressed and i found books and fics that made me feel so deeply and long for something i couldn't even put a name to, but knew i wanted to encompass and internalize and reflect back. i would copy lines i loved into notebooks and just study them, read them over and over again trying to figure out what could possibly make this string of words so beautiful to me - and if i understood it, maybe i would be able to write beautiful things, too. is there honestly any greater connection to have with people you don't know - people whose lives you've crossed purely in art? the people who inspired me have no idea they did, because i was a kid who hadn't become anything yet, who hadn't uncovered those secrets of how to build anything out of letters, but they shaped me in extraordinary ways.

i've now had the unmeasurable honor of people telling me these things, that i have inspired them and the way they use words to pick apart emotion and language, and i have seen that impact. i've seen people write with echoes of me because they read something and loved it the way i loved when i was younger - with that awe and wonderment and depth of feeling. i've seen phrases of mine, or dialogue, or metaphors, similes, poetry. i've had people ask for advice, or reference me in school work, or get tattoos. do you get the magnitude of that? it's not about ego. it's not that i'm trying to say, look how good i am. i'm trying to say that we all have the power and capability to affect each other through art in the most profound ways imaginable. i'm trying to say that once i was someone who didn't know how to write, and i looked up to people the same way people now look up to me, and it's completely surreal. we don't know each other. but we cross each other's lives and change each other without forethought or knowledge, and those people will go on to change other people, and i think fandom - for all its bullshit - interconnects us in such subtly tangible ways that it's impossible to even know all the people you've touched. but for me, it's something i deeply, deeply cherish about fandom; maybe we've never spoken, and maybe we never will, but for a moment, we were so close together. i wrote something to feel and you felt it. you felt it too.

and me, at 11, 12, 13 14 15 16, is a little less lonely.

i hope you don't mind me adding to this but i totally get what you're saying

i still remember the first fanficiton i read and how it made me feel. i remember thinking 'wow, what if i could do this?' and trying it out once and loving it

i don't know if that writer knows what an impact they had on my life, it was almost 20 years ago now and that one moment, that one fic i read gave me so much - it's the ripple effect of creativity and sharing your heart with someone in fanwork and then they see it, they see parts of themselves in it and they branch out into their own creations that, one day, will inspire someone else

it's why art matters, it's why sharing art matters, you never know how much you might effect another person's life